CHAPTER 12
The Stray
Robert nursed his beer at an empty sidewalk table in the cluster between the street and the tavern. He sat in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a tan vest, feeling undressed. His jacket of faded green corduroy lay tossed on the adjacent seat. His supple boots were replaced by a stiff and unyielding pair overdue for polish. He had left his wool riding breeches with inset padding at the knees in England; instead he wore threadbare twill trousers stained in places. Customarily, he would not have worn such clothing, but ordinary habits had changed. He even shaved, leaving his face exposed.
Still, he welcomed the muslin shirtsleeves after years of wool sweaters. He was older and did not miss the bite of the English wind on his battle scars. With heat, those aches faded. Such was the difference a few hundred miles made in the temperature, and he enjoyed the warmth emanating from the nearby wall.
The rippling pigeons scouring the street were engaging. Near the crowded storefronts, a group of ragtag boys played soldier. Occasionally their captain drilled his troop in marching, when they were not sword fighting with sticks.
Robert had never had children. He had not been around enough to make any, he guessed. At least he wasn't stuck playing father to those not even his, like other men were. When faced with being alone, some women lacked Molly Gordon's dedication. Which ones ever knew if their husband would return from some foreign shore?
Robert might not have given Molly children to succor her old age, but at least they had Alix. She was a bright ray of sunshine in their lives, no matter how desperate her own situation had once been. How that blunder could have turned so fortuitous, he would never unravel; he could only be thankful for it. She was the something right he had done in his otherwise sorry existence, but even she would not be able to forgive him if this went wrong.
The pigeons surged away as a plow horse wearing a harness carried a farmer up the street, his muddy boots dangling without stirrups. He stopped at the nearby water trough and slipped off to let his questionable mount drink. First he lifted his patched hat to scratch his baldpate; then he dug into a pocket for his pipe. He found it with a lean pack of tobacco but not a light.
Obligingly, Robert left his beer and pushed up from the table to loan the man his tinderbox. "Bonjour, Monsieur le Fermier."
The farmer regarded him with mild surprise. "Merci beaucoupJ Monsieur Genre." With a grin, he accepted the gift of the flint. "It's going to be a nice night, don't you agree?"
"Yes, I think it is."
"Have you ever been to Marseille?" the man wondered, puffing his smoke to life.
"Not for a long time."
He returned Robert's tinderbox with a bow. "You'll go again someday? I hear the best beer is at Hotel Argonaut."
"I'll have to try it if I go."
The farmer clamped his pipe in his teeth and handed back the flint with a folded scrap of paper before jumping onto the enormous horse with surprising agility. "Thanks again for the light."
"It's my pleasure," Robert replied, pocketing his tinderbox and the note as he returned to his table. He had just settled when his greyhen sandwich arrived with a fresh beer.
The boys had finished playing, and he ate in the silence of cooing pigeons and an occasional burst of conversation from inside the tavern. Somewhere, someone began to play an accordion. The sun shifted, leaving Robert's table in shadow, but the wall was still warm. After pushing away his plate, he leaned back to finish his beer and brought out his pipe with his pack of tobacco.
He retrieved his tinderbox to strike a flame and finally glanced at the farmer's note. He touched it to the flame and released it to the ashtray to watch it burn. After pulverizing the ashes with his spent matchstick, he blew a puff of smoke into the fading afternoon. He had a month to ensure that Quenton made it to Paris to petition the King for restoration.
QUENTON PLAYED HIS GUITAR and sang gently. See that lonesome dove . . . sitting in an ivy tree. The solid tick of a clock broke in, and awareness stole the sweet scent from the beeswax candles flickering. She's weeping for her own true love, as I shall weep for thee. Alix clung to her uncle's fading song, realizing it was only a dream, while the counter-syncopation from someone playing in another room stole Quenton's voice, until it dimmed into faint memory. Ten thousand miles . . . rocks may melt and the seas may burn. . . .
She lay alone in the darkness, listening to a different guitar playing in the night. With a displeased sigh, Alix rolled over and cuddled her pillow, willing the return of sleep. The upstart in the other room was singing Quenton's song, and while his rendition was pleasant, he could never match her uncle. Eventually, his music lulled her back into dreams.
Alix sat in a wooden chair. The floor where she scuffed her boot heel was gray slate. Pale light slanted through vaulted windows set in stone walls. The wood of the doors to the outside was bound with thick bands of iron. A floor clock ticked in droning silence. Alix drew a sharp breath of recognition of the rough-hewn room with armored suits guarding the corners. She was in the front hall outside her father's office. The tall-backed chair belonging to the doorman was empty. When the clock pendulum flashed and chimes rang out in a warning, an icy fear gripped her. She was locked in a dream and fixed in time, while the toll of the clock torched a terrible explosion.
Alix landed on the floor. With a disconnected awareness that it was too late to run, she fought the tangle of foreign sheets with a graceless displacement chasing her though a room of dislocated furniture. Stumbling and careening crazily, she toppled a chair that tripped her, banged into the rubbish can, and crashed against the door frame. The abrupt pain from a smashed toe brought her awake.
"Glory, what a mess." She fumbled for a light as her heart pounded away the residue of fear, and found that her split great toe was bleeding. "Oh, this is ridiculous," she muttered, as welling blood forced her to march on her heel to her dressing room in search of bandaging.
Purposely, she perched on the edge of a chair to tie a handkerchief around her toe. Her knee still hurt from the smashup at Oxley, and now this. Instead of staunching the bleeding, the thin linen blossomed brightly. Alix had seen blood before, but now it brought a strangely ominous oppression.
Resolutely, she closed her mind to the unresolved dregs of her nightmare and rummaged through cupboards for a rag. She ignored the weighty trap of blood by disguising it and hobbled to the couch. After lighting a reading lamp, she grabbed the nearest book and opened it randomly. I am but mad north-north- west. When the wind is souther!y . . . She began where her eyes found the page, and let Prince Hamlet's predicament transcend her discomfort.
Jenny's exclamation woke her from a restless doze with a start. "Fie, what happened? It looks like a storm blew through here!"
The confused light of morning revealed the disastrous scene in the bedchamber. Haphazard bedclothes draped an upturned chair and a dented rubbish can. In the dressing room, where lamps burned low, the cupboards were ajar and the drawers swelled with tangled things Alix had tossed in her desperation to disguise her blood.
"A nightmare woke me. I fell out of bed and stubbed my toe," she explained weakly, surrendering to the maid's skillful ministrations.
Jenny busily reached for the footstool and unwound the hasty bandage to look at Alix's damaged toe. "If you miss this morning's fitting, it might be weeks before the dressmaker has another opening. Minnie says her cousin's shop has been crushed with new orders."
While the maid cared for her foot, Alix sketched a design for a necklace, a gift of gratitude for Jenny. In the alleyway near the dressmaker, there was a master craftsman's shop where Alix had once commissioned a gold-handled walking stick for Quenton. If anyone could create a jade collar lustrous enough to match Jenny's eyes, it was Cyril the stonecutter.
Jenny straightened at a rap on the doo